Ken C, Elliot Dirr and myself had a great dive last night.
Hopping my way to full cave...
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OP
I heard Elliot was in town, are you guys working on P3?
No we just went for a lovely scooter ride at the Ginnie Wednesday Night Social.
OP
I really need to get my scooter wet one of these days.
Anyways I had a moment and threw together the test footage I took on Wednesday.
I'm going to need a lot more lights, the only footage that I was remotely happy with was when I was directly under the drop light.
Anyways I had a moment and threw together the test footage I took on Wednesday.
I'm going to need a lot more lights, the only footage that I was remotely happy with was when I was directly under the drop light.
OP
"You are good, but you have to be better."
Well got a dive in with Hubie. I've probably mentioned it further up the thread, but he runs a disabled divers charity up in Canada. And helped me figure out the modified flutter that enabled me to start cave diving.
So it was helpful to go diving with someone who would view me critically. So we attempted to do a dive to July Springs. Hubie would lead, I would be in the middle, and his assistant would bring up the rear. Not much to say about swim to the eye. But what surprised me was how quickly he swam through the cave, much quicker than I was used to, particularly with my latest attempts at purposely slowing down. I turned for gas at the July Springs jump 20 minutes into the dive (which started a couple of minutes before we descended into the Eye). Which was incredibly quick, I'm looking at my other dives probably a good 5-10 minutes quicker than it would normally take me to get there.
Anyways the gallery wasn't bad, and the lips was also pretty easy, as I stuck on the inner corner this time. And I attempted to stay high through the keyhole, which made it a lot easier. Anyways we jump to Hill 400, and as I saw him pulling out a spool to jump to July Springs, I turned for gas. On the way back, we followed a slightly different route, which we briefed. We jumped to the lips bypass, and then once out on the other side jumped to the far entrance to the catacombs exiting through the near entrance. I checked the exit sides of both lines during entry, and I have been down the bypass lines once so I was familiar.
Anyways we followed the reel to the lips bypass line off the bypass lines. When Hubie saw me checking the reel and markings, he realized that the Tee wasn't marked, so he swam ahead and marked the exit side with a REM. Which I appreciated, as while I knew the line having a marking is important. Which IMO I feel really should be marked with official markings.
This was the first time I did anything that tight since I started diving dry. And I was surprised it wasn't as bad as I thought. I was worried about dragging the fin on my prosthetic side on the rocks as I maneuvered through. Next was the Catacombs, the route we went through was easier than the parts I did as part of training, as I never had to go sideways to get through it. And it was as pretty as I remember, with a metric ton of catfish. I need to get in there for a few dives with a camera, lights, and a workable buddy.
Anyways exit through the eye, I didn't have any deco on my primary computer. My back up computer went into deco during my exit through the eye, and immediately cleared it. But they had deco as this was their second dive of the day. So I waited for their deco, and swam back to the stairs.
At the stairs we through what he saw, which is where the paraphrased quote above is from. The biggest thing was that I was puffing a little too much with my modified flutter. And gave me a couple of ideas on how to work it. First was to arc my back more which would bring my legs up. The second would be to develop a one legged frog kick to use in lower passages. After the dive he proceeded to show me both on a picnic table.
Anyways next week I am going to bring one of my larger reels and do some work on that in the catacombs, and do some video test work while I do that. I left the camera behind this week because of the new full cave diver, I didn't feel comfortable as it makes communication harder.
Well got a dive in with Hubie. I've probably mentioned it further up the thread, but he runs a disabled divers charity up in Canada. And helped me figure out the modified flutter that enabled me to start cave diving.
So it was helpful to go diving with someone who would view me critically. So we attempted to do a dive to July Springs. Hubie would lead, I would be in the middle, and his assistant would bring up the rear. Not much to say about swim to the eye. But what surprised me was how quickly he swam through the cave, much quicker than I was used to, particularly with my latest attempts at purposely slowing down. I turned for gas at the July Springs jump 20 minutes into the dive (which started a couple of minutes before we descended into the Eye). Which was incredibly quick, I'm looking at my other dives probably a good 5-10 minutes quicker than it would normally take me to get there.
Anyways the gallery wasn't bad, and the lips was also pretty easy, as I stuck on the inner corner this time. And I attempted to stay high through the keyhole, which made it a lot easier. Anyways we jump to Hill 400, and as I saw him pulling out a spool to jump to July Springs, I turned for gas. On the way back, we followed a slightly different route, which we briefed. We jumped to the lips bypass, and then once out on the other side jumped to the far entrance to the catacombs exiting through the near entrance. I checked the exit sides of both lines during entry, and I have been down the bypass lines once so I was familiar.
Anyways we followed the reel to the lips bypass line off the bypass lines. When Hubie saw me checking the reel and markings, he realized that the Tee wasn't marked, so he swam ahead and marked the exit side with a REM. Which I appreciated, as while I knew the line having a marking is important. Which IMO I feel really should be marked with official markings.
This was the first time I did anything that tight since I started diving dry. And I was surprised it wasn't as bad as I thought. I was worried about dragging the fin on my prosthetic side on the rocks as I maneuvered through. Next was the Catacombs, the route we went through was easier than the parts I did as part of training, as I never had to go sideways to get through it. And it was as pretty as I remember, with a metric ton of catfish. I need to get in there for a few dives with a camera, lights, and a workable buddy.
Anyways exit through the eye, I didn't have any deco on my primary computer. My back up computer went into deco during my exit through the eye, and immediately cleared it. But they had deco as this was their second dive of the day. So I waited for their deco, and swam back to the stairs.
At the stairs we through what he saw, which is where the paraphrased quote above is from. The biggest thing was that I was puffing a little too much with my modified flutter. And gave me a couple of ideas on how to work it. First was to arc my back more which would bring my legs up. The second would be to develop a one legged frog kick to use in lower passages. After the dive he proceeded to show me both on a picnic table.
Anyways next week I am going to bring one of my larger reels and do some work on that in the catacombs, and do some video test work while I do that. I left the camera behind this week because of the new full cave diver, I didn't feel comfortable as it makes communication harder.
OP
Went back to Ginnie yesterday, my plan was to do some stage handling/swimming practice, and hit the Catacombs. So I geared up and hit the water. I forgot how bulky stage diving was, but I made it to the eye dump my deco bottle and work my way down the chute. I found it a lot harder to do with a stage as you had to be further away from the rocks, so you don’t get as much arm movement or reach with your pulling.
While a little harder I did make it to the Lips fairly quickly, there I chose the arrow there to run my live off of. So I dumped my stage behind it, and tied my line into the arrow, and down to a rock so it quickly dropped to the floor as I wasn’t planning to garrote any DPV divers today. Once in the Catacombs, I forgot how much running a line sucked, particularly in the sandy sections where there were few rocks to do placements on. But despite a couple of incorrect turns (“Oh wait, that is my line!”), I made it to the exit at the bottom of the chute. Tying my real in, and dropping a cookie to indicate exit direction. Thinking back I should’ve dropped a REM.
I head back up through the gallery to the start of the line. And swam the Catacombs. Other than last week where we flew through it, this was my first time in the Catacombs since I did line work with Reggie. Of which I spent most of the time behind a mask. I was seriously surprised about some of the rooms I was in, they were quite large. Probably a good 10-15 feet high largely the untoched black rock you see in the lower traffic sections of Ginnie. I had the two Canadians I was diving with last week, took time to appreciate it because I was running the same route, and when we did it we didn’t stop like I did. Also the tunnels seem a lot larger than I remember. I felt like I was squeezing through them in training. Now it was just like a normal tunnel for me.
A couple of funny things, I think a catfish was trying to kill me. As it dragged my line off the placement I did, and into a line trap. All while I was watching, it was probably planning to do silt angels to silt the place up. Also I found a pork rib pretty far into the Catacombs, I just imagine a catfish dragging that thing into the cave.
After three trips through the catacombs and back up the gallery, I had been there for well over an hour and was in deco. So I figured I would wrap it up before I got more than a few minutes of an obligation. So I started to start reeling in the line. If I thought laying the line sucked, reeling it in was even worse. Without a buddy I didn’t have anyone to light things up for me. So if I do this again I might have to consider a Mexico style helmet or figure someway to put a small light on my mask strap. And I’ll be honest the Divesoft reel didn’t impress me, it didn’t feel as smooth as my Diverites, probably because of the diameter of the reel was larger than the Slide Locks. And it sucked even more in the Gallery having to deal with the flow while reeling in. But I survived and got my reel put away, and finally got my stage bottle back on doing the gas switch.
Swimming back to the eye I stopped to look at the Sand Dollar/Sea Biscuit in the wall, unfortuntely I also noticed the graffiti just around the corner from it.
I made my way up the chute and stop in that one stop to move my stage bottle around in preparation for picking up my deco bottle. I noticed a lot of lights flashing in the Eye, so I figured a team entering but was waiting for me. So after I switched to back gas, I covered my light for a good 30 seconds hoping that would let them start their entry. They didn’t start so I turned off my light completely while I finished doing the stage clean up and swap. When I was almost done with it, I see a hand with a safety reel and back up light poke down from the rock above, cavern divers. Thankfully that was all that poked down, as I didn’t want to have to stop them.
I stop and do my deco in one of the alcoves in the eye. Being cheap I figured I would do the swim back on my stage, as I have a huge fill card at a local dive shop for nitrox, so it is very cheap. But in the time it took me to swap the tanks over and do a proper gas switch I probably wasted more gas than just swimming back.
The swim back was uneventful, but as I was standing at the stairs working up the energy to take things off and pull my tanks out of the water, I realized I probably have 200lbs of gear on. How did I get here from a single AL80 and a shortie? Though I wouldn’t have imagined doing 2 hour dives like they are just another Tuesday.
While a little harder I did make it to the Lips fairly quickly, there I chose the arrow there to run my live off of. So I dumped my stage behind it, and tied my line into the arrow, and down to a rock so it quickly dropped to the floor as I wasn’t planning to garrote any DPV divers today. Once in the Catacombs, I forgot how much running a line sucked, particularly in the sandy sections where there were few rocks to do placements on. But despite a couple of incorrect turns (“Oh wait, that is my line!”), I made it to the exit at the bottom of the chute. Tying my real in, and dropping a cookie to indicate exit direction. Thinking back I should’ve dropped a REM.
I head back up through the gallery to the start of the line. And swam the Catacombs. Other than last week where we flew through it, this was my first time in the Catacombs since I did line work with Reggie. Of which I spent most of the time behind a mask. I was seriously surprised about some of the rooms I was in, they were quite large. Probably a good 10-15 feet high largely the untoched black rock you see in the lower traffic sections of Ginnie. I had the two Canadians I was diving with last week, took time to appreciate it because I was running the same route, and when we did it we didn’t stop like I did. Also the tunnels seem a lot larger than I remember. I felt like I was squeezing through them in training. Now it was just like a normal tunnel for me.
A couple of funny things, I think a catfish was trying to kill me. As it dragged my line off the placement I did, and into a line trap. All while I was watching, it was probably planning to do silt angels to silt the place up. Also I found a pork rib pretty far into the Catacombs, I just imagine a catfish dragging that thing into the cave.
After three trips through the catacombs and back up the gallery, I had been there for well over an hour and was in deco. So I figured I would wrap it up before I got more than a few minutes of an obligation. So I started to start reeling in the line. If I thought laying the line sucked, reeling it in was even worse. Without a buddy I didn’t have anyone to light things up for me. So if I do this again I might have to consider a Mexico style helmet or figure someway to put a small light on my mask strap. And I’ll be honest the Divesoft reel didn’t impress me, it didn’t feel as smooth as my Diverites, probably because of the diameter of the reel was larger than the Slide Locks. And it sucked even more in the Gallery having to deal with the flow while reeling in. But I survived and got my reel put away, and finally got my stage bottle back on doing the gas switch.
Swimming back to the eye I stopped to look at the Sand Dollar/Sea Biscuit in the wall, unfortuntely I also noticed the graffiti just around the corner from it.
I made my way up the chute and stop in that one stop to move my stage bottle around in preparation for picking up my deco bottle. I noticed a lot of lights flashing in the Eye, so I figured a team entering but was waiting for me. So after I switched to back gas, I covered my light for a good 30 seconds hoping that would let them start their entry. They didn’t start so I turned off my light completely while I finished doing the stage clean up and swap. When I was almost done with it, I see a hand with a safety reel and back up light poke down from the rock above, cavern divers. Thankfully that was all that poked down, as I didn’t want to have to stop them.I stop and do my deco in one of the alcoves in the eye. Being cheap I figured I would do the swim back on my stage, as I have a huge fill card at a local dive shop for nitrox, so it is very cheap. But in the time it took me to swap the tanks over and do a proper gas switch I probably wasted more gas than just swimming back.
The swim back was uneventful, but as I was standing at the stairs working up the energy to take things off and pull my tanks out of the water, I realized I probably have 200lbs of gear on. How did I get here from a single AL80 and a shortie? Though I wouldn’t have imagined doing 2 hour dives like they are just another Tuesday.
If you like the dive rite reels better than the divesoft, then a better choice would be a halcyon. I find the dive rites to be of significantly less quality.
Get someone to show you the keyhole bypass and it will probably make your life easier so you don't have to fight the flow as much
Get someone to show you the keyhole bypass and it will probably make your life easier so you don't have to fight the flow as much
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two small loops of thin bungee. One in the split on the very back of the mask strap and one slightly larger on the left or right side. You can clip a backup light to the small one in the back and slide it over the front. Holds it on the strap quite well. Use a push button one not a twisty. I use an @OrcaTorch D530V or D530 which work really well. I prefer the video spread for this application personally but it's personal preference.
See, I told you catfish are evil!!
OP
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